


Sometimes in the Morning

by riyku



Series: Skam Sunday [1]
Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Ableist Language, Bipolar Disorder, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 08:29:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10850244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riyku/pseuds/riyku
Summary: You won a game of genetic spin the bottle with someone nobody ever wants to kiss.





	Sometimes in the Morning

**Author's Note:**

> There aren't enough thanks in the world for tebtosca for not only getting me into the show, but spending the better part of her afternoon workshopping this thing with me, line by line. She's the Eskild to my Isak. This one's for you, Terrible One.
> 
> Also, a quick disclaimer: This deals with canon through season 3. I've not seen one speck of S4, so forgive me any trespasses with this here fic. I have it very good authority that it's a wee bit jossed at this point.

You wake up and roll over and squint into the sunlight and your first thought is about Isak. How he would look stretched out along your side. How the light would fall on him, fill him up. You think about whether or not his feet are cold, wonder if he snores and hope that he does, just a little. You'd wake him by kissing the dip on his upper lip, fingers tripping along his ribs. The two of you would get high. Eat breakfast. You need to buy more cardamom. 

This morning is like any one of a thousand others. The apartment is already empty. You get up, brush your teeth and take a shower, remember that you'd forgotten to do the reading for class today. 

Isak's hat is on the windowsill in your bedroom and you smile, huge and hopeless, a towel around your waist, still dripping on the floor. You hope that he left it on purpose. Either way, it's an excuse to see him again. You hold it up to your nose. It smells like sweat and unwashed hair, instantly familiar. Your heart beats faster and you feel imprinted, and you know beyond a glimmer of a doubt that you are a boy who's in love with another boy. The idea of it is not as frightening as it perhaps should be. Oddly, you are not afraid.

~*~*~*~

You won a game of genetic spin the bottle with someone nobody ever wants to kiss. It's not anyone's fault. A couple of pills a day. Consistency is important. Stay away from anything recreational. Never be a teenaged kid.

In therapy, doctors have asked you to explain it. What it feels like. You've never really been able to do what they want. You can't put it into words or draw a picture of it. Thoughts like an invading army, an occupying force that talks like you and looks like you but isn't. That's not right. It's like putting on someone else's glasses and suddenly everything has a shadow, a double image slightly to the left and up a little bit higher. But that's not quite right either.

~*~*~*~

God kisses Julius Caesar underwater and then Julius Caesar kisses him back. There are a million metaphors trapped inside of that but you don't want to waste time picking them all out. You're too occupied with holding Isak's face between your hands, learning the shape of his mouth with your own. Wearing his clothes, wrapping yourself in the scent of his skin.

You forget to blink when you look at him, only remember when your eyes sting and go blurry. You try to memorize how his hair curls around his ears, the curve of his fingernails, the way his tongue nudges against the back of his teeth when he says your name, fills in the gaps for a second. Each and every line of his body when he presses along your side.

Isak looks at you and sees a person. He doesn't see a broken thing, someone to be medicated and coddled and told how to live. You can't remember how long it's been since you've had someone look at you, really look at you, and not see you filtered through your sickness. 

You can't lose that, so you don't tell him.

~*~*~*~

Isak's roommate is nice. Greets you with an expression that is carefully unsurprised when you are trying to stay silent and slip into your shoes and out of the back door. Isak's pants are too short for you, God's wig and beard hang damply from your hand but he doesn't mention it. You tell him that you were drunk, that Isak was kind enough to let you crash. He welcomes you to stay, offers you breakfast, says he likes your shirt and to come back whenever you want.

~*~*~*~

Sonja's gaze is clinical, assessing. The two of you are at her apartment. It often smells like food in here, the curry her neighbors are always cooking. Her legs are crossed, hands folded on her knee. Her nails are painted bright, shiny red. Maybe Isak will let you paint his nails one day. The idea flies into your head out of nowhere and there are sparks at the edges of it. Dark blue. That's the color you would choose.

You might be a lot of things, both good and not-so-good, but you've never wanted to be a cheat. You tell her about Isak, your heart hitches every time you say his name and a small sliver of your mind is still stuck in disbelief, can't imagine a world where any of this is real. 

She leans forward, narrows her eyes and asks how long it's been since you've slept.

~*~*~*~

This is the last time you'll kiss him. The last time you'll notch your thumb in front of his ear and bury your fingers in his hair. You pray the locker room stays empty a minute longer. Just a minute. A line from a poem you read last year keeps repeating on a loop in your head, something about the essence of love and failure and you get it now. Better than you did before.

The part of you that's logical is telling you to walk away. Isak is better off without your brand of crazy. He's safer. Happier. The other part of you, the one that's so in love with him you can hardly breathe, is screaming at you to kiss him again. Just one more time.

~*~*~*~

Zero days. You can still push the sparks back, force everything to slow down when it begins to speed up. That's the answer to the question Sonja keeps asking, but you don't tell her that. Convincing her only makes it take up more space in your head.

You're doing fine until you aren't, and that's another answer that you're never going to give her. 

Two days. You spent last night rearranging the drawings on your wall, hoping to find an order that would make more sense. Self-medication isn't working this time. You drink a six-pack and smoke until you've gone from stoned back to sober and you're still staring at the ceiling. 

Three days. You forget the reading for school again, but you can relay every meal Isak has had for the last week. Cardamom or not. The bags under his eyes are like looking into a mirror. 

You make up scenarios where you are not sick and Isak is not afraid and everything is as beautiful as a Baz Luhrmann flick but without the inevitably tragic ending. Storyboards begin to fill up the desk drawers, a fine layer of eraser dust over everything because you can never get it down on paper the way you picture it in your head. You spell his name out with matchsticks and consider setting them on fire.

There's a buzz under your skin like electricity and you begin taking long walks at night in only a t-shirt, trying to make your body go numb. The edges of everything start to crackle, fly by too fast, your vision, your thoughts. The sparks are back. You wish you'd kept his hat.

Compulsion is the kissing cousin to all of this and you build excuses to walk through Isak's neighborhood. So you're four blocks away when he writes you. You're thankful you thought to wear a coat this time. You don't want him to know.

He opens the door and you're out of breath, trying not to let it show. Your heart is banging so hard you fear your ribs might break. You can't be funny right now. There's no such thing as charming, just open-mouthed desperation. You fall on your knees in front of him and it's as familiar as the smell of him. You've been on your knees from the start. Now it's physical.

~*~*~*~

Isak isn't a symptom. He's not memorizing the Quran or staying up for a week or forgetting to eat for days at a time. Those are symptoms. Isak is a feeling in your chest and an arm around your middle and a heartbeat you can press your ear against. He's the thing that fills up the quiet that scares the hell out of you. You want to be the man of his dreams. It's not a joke or a hashtag. You're gonna ask him to marry you. You've known him seven weeks.

~*~*~*~

Too many days.

You learn what Isak sounds like when you push inside, draw his legs up higher around your hips. How his mouth goes slack and his eyes turn liquid and his breath comes out in a hitching, soft sigh. He opens up and lets you in, God and Julius Caesar, maybe white Teslas and balconies, more metaphors you don't have time for, but nevermind that. You know it hardly makes sense, even as you are saying it.

You study the arch of his eyebrow and the quirky line where his lips meet so you can draw them better next time. He calls you baby and wants you to sleep beside him and you wish with everything that you have that you could, but it's been too many days, plus one.

Isak has stopped blinking when he's looking at you and that's when it hits you. It all becomes real. Terrifyingly, beautifully real.

You run. He loves you and one day you will end up hurting him and when that day comes it'll be like the universe collapsing. There's a taste like blood in your mouth, and you don't stop running. 

\--end


End file.
